Malaysian job seekers prefer Western firms
Written by The Edge Tuesday, 19 April 2011 19:31
Job seekers in Malaysia overwhelmingly prefer to work for Western rather than Asian companies. A survey by global human resource consultancy Aon Hewitt and online careers site Jobstreet.com found that 71% of Malaysians chose US companies as their employer of choice, followed by UK and Australian companies. Among Asian firms, Japanese firms emerged tops with 52% of Malaysian respondents saying they would pick these companies.
Conducted last October, the Jobseekers Preference Survey collected about 14,000 responses from job seekers in Asia, including 3,440 from Malaysia, on their perception of companies in the region. The survey spanned eight countries including Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and India.
The regional study found the results from Malaysia to be consistent with the rest of Asia. In general, job seekers in Asia prefer to work for Western firms, with 67% choosing western firms over Asian firms. At the other end of the spectrum, Indian and Chinese employers were ranked as the least preferred with preference ratings of 28% and 30%. In fact, 27% prefer not to work for Indian companies and 24% felt the same way about Chinese firms.
According to Aon Hewitt, the study indicated a substantial gap between Asian and Western companies in terms of their employer brand.
“What strikes us is how far behind the Asian companies are in terms of being the preferred employer. With a tight job market and a strong employment outlook for 2011 in the region, Asian companies would need to enhance their value proposition as an employer to attract the talent they want, both at home and around the region,” said Yusuke Higaki, country manager of Jobstreet.com Japan.
The reason for this difference is the perception that Western employers have better working environments than Asian employers. The study found that 95% of Malaysian respondents rated an “excellent working environment” as the most important factor when selecting an employer.
“Our analysis shows that the desire to work for a company with an excellent working environment is positively correlated with the desire to work for American or British companies but negatively correlated with the desire to work for an Asian company with the exception of Japanese companies,” said Rick Payne, Aon Hewitt’s regional practice leader for human capital.
Other key attraction factors were overseas training and development opportunities (75%) and the perception of the product or service quality of the company (68%). Least important was the nationality of local top management. Only 37% considered having local nationals as local top management to be either “extremely important” or “very important”.
For Malaysian companies looking to internationalise, one key talent challenge is turning the negative perception of their working environment to a positive one, observed the report. This negative perception could become a huge stumbling block for Asian companies looking to attract top talent in Malaysia, added Payne.
“If Asian companies want to compete for top talent in Malaysia and the region, they need to invest into building an attractive and sustainable employer brand,” he said.
